photos by Luckee Ngin
Los Angeles-based indigenous death/doom metal tribe TZOMPANTLI has booked a round of tour dates for late July. The shows will run from July 22nd through 27th and will see them playing Santa Rosa, Eureka, Portland, Seattle, and Salt Lake City surrounding their performance at Fire In The Mountains Festival at Blackfeet Nation, Montana where they’ll share the stage with Wardruna, Old Man’s Child, Chelsea Wolfe, Converge, Blackbraid, Steve Von Till, and more.
The band states, “This Summer, TZOMPANTLI will be forging a blood-soaked path up the West Coast, onward to the Great Blackfeet Nation, and into the Fire in the Mountains Festival — offering a wall of sound and drums that echo through the land, calling the spirits from Mictlan to rise. Join us in ceremony as we walk the obsidian path carved by blood, fire and memory, honoring the ancestors with every step. Witness the offering.”
TZOMPANTLI Summer 2025 Tour Dates:
7/22/2025 Arlene Francis Center – Santa Rosa, CA
7/23/2025 Savage Henry Comedy Club – Eureka, CA
7/24/2025 Dante’s – Portland, OR
7/25/2025 Baba Yaga – Seattle, WA
7/26/2025 Fire In The Mountains Festival – Blackfeet Nation, MT [info]
7/27/2025 Aces High Saloon – Salt Lake City, UT
TZOMPANTLI is the brainchild of Brian “Itztlakamayeh” Ortiz, guitarist for metallic hardcore outfit Xibabla. With the Tlazcaltiliztli debut album, TZOMPANTLI called forth a penetrating strike of death and doom metal like a poisoned arrow through the heart. The band’s foundation in Indigenous/native rituals, history, and lore, and merging of traditional instruments into their sound made for one of 2022’s most uniquely voiced metal records.
TZOMPANTLI was again summoned from the smoke of the ancient fires in 2024 with a new offering at the altar of human sacrifice with their second LP, Beating The Drums Of Ancestral Force. Fearsomely brutal war marches of percussive death metal are contrasted with melancholy passages of longing spirit and entrancing ceremonial invocations to the ancestors. The TZOMPANTLI tribe has greatly expanded on this second album with more than ten musicians enlisted in the conjuring of wrathful deities and collection of invader skulls.
There has been no shortage of fantastic death/doom records in recent years and TZOMPANTLI’s latest entry in the genre’s pantheon demonstrates its continued expansion into wider musical and thematic arenas. The anguished fortitude at the heart of Beating The Drums Of Ancestral Force exalts in the blood and ash of empire and would be conquerors, a fiery lamentation to centuries of erasure.
With members of Civerous, Dead Heat, Teeth, and more supplying the vast array of instrumentation to the album, Beating The Drums Of Ancestral Force was recorded, produced, mixed, and mastered by Erol Ulug at Bright Light Studios, and completed with cover artwork by Adam Burke, layout by Chimere Noire, and photography by Luckee Ngin. TZOMPANTLI’s unique sound draws listeners of Coffins, Mortiferum, Anhedonist, Evoken, Sepultura, Xibabla (US), Hooded Menace, Mournful Congregation, Yaotl Mictlan, the early Paradise Lost and Anathema albums, and beyond.
TZOMPANTLI’s Beating The Drums Of Ancestral Force is out now on LP, CD, MC, and digital platforms at the 20 Buck Spin webshop HERE and Bandcamp HERE.
https://www.instagram.com/tzompantlidoom
https://www.facebook.com/tzompantlidoom
https://tzompantlidoom.bandcamp.com
https://www.20buckspin.com
https://listen.20buckspin.com
https://www.facebook.com/20buckspin
https://twitter.com/20buckspinlabel
https://www.instagram.com/20buckspinlabel